


Stronger Than She Feels

by Seraphym



Category: Dragon Age: Inquisition
Genre: Babe in the woods, Canon Related, Dalish Elven Culture and Customs, F/M, Headcanon, Help, I'm Sorry, Lavellan Backstory, No Smut, Not Beta Read, Part of a much longer work but I don't know if it's any good, Possible Eventual Smut, Pre-Relationship, Self-Esteem Issues, Slow Burn, please read it anyway, tagging is hard
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-30
Updated: 2018-03-30
Packaged: 2019-04-14 19:41:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14143155
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Seraphym/pseuds/Seraphym
Summary: Silvhen has agreed to at least be part of the newborn Inquisition and has recruited all possible companions who are now at Haven. She makes them uncomfortable, and she thinks she knows why. In a quiet moment, she makes a drastic decision and goes through with it at once.





	Stronger Than She Feels

**Author's Note:**

> Canonically, this takes place just after The Threat Remains and before In Hushed Whispers. 
> 
> I have a great deal of respect and admiration for this fandom and the writing here, so if I get any positive feedback or constructive criticism, I'll know I'm on the right track!

Silvhen leveled a resolved glare at her hazy reflection in the dirty window. All the other panes were cracked, and if she _had_ to hack off an arm-length of silvery white, loosely curling hair, she'd at least prefer the edges of the severe new cut to be straight.

Although, she mused, "straight" was about the only effect she could really hope to achieve. Her reflection was slightly double and streaked with years of grime and apathy. Just as well. She didn’t need for her hair to look pretty. The whole point of this endeavour was to somehow subdue the effect of her startling appearance on these people whose cause she had been caught up in. 

Not just her companions, either. It was plain on the faces of all who saw her for the first time: the humans with their embarrassingly obvious covertness, the dwarves with their patently discreet assessment, and the Qunari with their unapologetic directness. 

Silvhen assumed, of course, that it was the strangeness of her odd, unlovely features that drew their unwanted attention like flies to rotting meat. What she couldn't know was that the Dalish clan Lavellan's convictions surrounding physical desirability and faults would be alien to the rest of the world, just as it had once seemed to her. What she would never see coming was a paradox very similar to the one she had already lived as an outcast-become-darling. That the same features she had believed were deformities were, in fact, the features most people found quite attractive in their singularity, and that instead of being doubted because of her frightfulness, as she assumed, it was in fact that she was perceived as somewhat ethereally pretty that made her seem too fragile, too delicate to be of any real use whatsoever in the war ahead.

She took a deep, steadying breath and allowed herself one last look at her own visage. Her own self. The rejected little girl she had once been and the young woman she had only recently become: the petted darling of her clan who was much too far away from home. For perhaps the last time - for who could possibly say whether this scar in the sky, this "Breach", wasn't just the first salvo launched in the destruction of the world - Silvhen took in the sight of her own features. For perhaps the first time - for she had never been faced with its loss – she appreciated the tumbling twists of silvery white hair that shone and sparkled like the snow she had once been named for. 

Without really thinking about it, Silvhen stepped closer to the window, lifted the rusty tanning shears she’d found to one side of her head and began sawing the corroded blades against lock after lock of hair, as close to the skin of her head as she could manage. As she worked towards the back of her head, she surveyed the striking, inexplicably dark brows and lashes that framed perhaps the most unexpected trait of all: the violet eyes, just a shade bluer than dark pink. Silvhen sighed. She wished it was as simple to hide her eyes as it was to cut her hair.

Before she knew better, long before The Incident, she had once thought her deep blue eyes splendid. Fringed by richly golden, lazy curls, they made her think of the blue of the sky and the sun at its highest. She soon learned they were her weakness, a flaw that set her apart as less than her clanmates, her lethallin. The Dalish mostly had grey eyes. Grey-green, muted brown, and even steely grey-blue eyes were the "appropriate" eye colours. They were the shades and nuances that blended best with the dappled colours of the wilderness they moved through and lived in. Too-pale, too-dark and certainly bright hair and eyes were deemed dangerous. They stood out; could catch a wandering shem’s eye and draw his attention to the whole clan. Her people lived in constant dread of being captured by shem slavers and this dread dictated almost every nuance of Dalish tradition and culture. Clan Lavellan’s single-minded lifestyle afforded little room for sentimentality. Survival and the rigors of protecting one’s freedom from oppression are harsh masters and the Dalish elves were diligent pupils. Lamentably, as is the bent of humanoid races anywhere, not just were such unwanted traits spurned, their bearers were maligned. Vilified. 

_Demonized._

A tiny sliver of repressed fear ran down her spine at the memory that surfaced. The Incident, which scathed the blood in her veins and bleached her appearance. Left her as ghostly pale as a wraith. Had it not all culminated in her ultimately saving the Keeper from certain death… Silvhen pushed the memory away. That was then. Her world had changed utterly and irrevocably. The _whole_ world had. It did no good to dwell. 

Nevertheless, the wariness set into the expression around her eyes and tight along the line of her lips remained. The Incident had changed everything, had changed the terms of her very existence, yet it had been no more of her own making than her appearance was. She still liked her eyes, she decided, despite the unnatural hue they were now. They were kind, if not warm. Accepting, if not inviting. Giving, if yet guarded. They still seemed pretty to her, though shaded with sorrow and loneliness, left by the lost little girl who had known both rejection and reverence, but never friendship. 

Silvhen's thumb pad began to ache as she forced the dull blades through her hair again and again. The corroded metal of the handles scraped her skin. Her thoughts continued to absorb her, a distraction from the pain of both her hand and the task to which it labored. 

One side and now the back was done. Silvhen dragged the remaining curls over the front of her left shoulder. The curls that had delighted clan babies when she was allowed to watch them. The curls that seemed to beg to be wrapped around a man's fingers. 

Silvhen's mind clamped down, and her heart steeled.

And never love. 

No. 

Not then. Not now. 

_Not ever._

She made one last wrenching, gnawing cut and the shears followed the last locks of hair to the ground, landing heavily in the grass laced with silvery hair. 

Silvhen stared at her reflection, past her shocked expression to the relative stranger looking back at her. 

Aesthetically, the shorn sides and back of her head brought the lines of her face into relief, accenting her angles. Her jawline, no longer foiled by waves of curls, jutted sharply enough to cast shadow on her neck in the high noon light. Her eyes were unfortunately brighter without their snowy backdrop, and stood out even more against the stark lines of her ears and chin. But incredibly, the effect was just as drastically chimerical. She looked capable. She looked fearless. 

"I look strong," she breathed. 

"Stronger than you feel."

Silvhen's pulse leapt and her heart thudded hard at Solas' voice near her ear.

“Solas!” Instantly, mercilessly, she reined the sudden riot of feelings in along with her magic, and they slipped and slid as they followed each other in their retreat beneath her skin. She spoke, her words measured and polite. "How long have you-... No.” She shook her head. “Of course not. I’m sorry." He would not have invaded her privacy by watching her without her knowing. He had assuredly announced his presence immediately. 

Solas' lips curved in a wisp of a smile as Silvhen corrected herself. She understood him so well already, it seemed. Not much of elven culture survived across clans and cities, but of the little that did, that deep respect for privacy was strongest. People thought of Solas as distant, detached. But he wasn’t. Far from it. He simply sought to provide a buffer between his uncanny perceptions and their secrets. 

He arched a mildly questioning eyebrow at Silvhen and she nodded her agreement slowly, turning back to her reflection. "Yes. Stronger than I feel." 

Solas took a small step closer to her side but remained out of the frame of her reflection. 

" _But_ … " he murmured. He placed a slender fingertip on the window and slowly traced the angle of the reflection of her newly defined jawline on the glass. Silvhen’s lips parted in a tiny gasp at the tenderness in the gesture.

" …not _as_ strong... as you _will_ be." He moved just behind her, his arms linked at his back. Warmth gathered in the slight space between them as they gazed at their reflections; at _her_. 

The woman she was now. 

The warrior-mage she had begun to become. 

And the leader she was wholly unprepared to be.

**Author's Note:**

> Silvhen is pronounced with the emphasis on the second syllable, i.e. Sil-VHEN. I like to imagine that the "vh" sound in elvish is softer than the "v" sound, with an almost-but-not-quite fricative effect. But then again, I spend way too much time thinking about these things. 
> 
> Thank you so much for reading this, smutless though it was! (I'm bad for only wanting to read stories where they get it on, haha). I would welcome constructive criticism and pointers. But please be gentle, this is my first submission ever!


End file.
